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A new study conducted with ANSIRH finds that accurate portrayals of abortion in storylines on A Million Little Things, Better Things, and Station 19 fostered greater understanding of abortion access and safety, and even inspired some to take actions in support of reproductive rights.
Our award-winning gun guide has been updated since U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in June 2024 declared firearm violence a public health crisis.
A black dress, bought on Amazon was the small detail that brought home a poignant truth about the challenges women encounter in finding abortion care in a post-Roe America, in this Hollywood, Health & Society panel.
This Popular Music Project series explores political and cultural polarization in three US cities. Two musicians from different cultural and musical backgrounds come together in an improvised performance and dialogue. Where do they connect? Can music be a model for bridging divides?
This study conducted in collaboration with IllumiNative found improvements in on-screen portrayals, but also highlights a need for better representation of Native talent behind the scenes.
Extrapolations Impact Study
Extrapolations (Apple TV) grappled with the life-altering choices that must be made in a changing climate. We are measuring the impact of this important series a quantitative study of a major scripted climate storyline. Stay tuned.
By examining sustainability-related keywords over a six-month period spanning 200,000 hours of unscripted programming, we found more than 28,000 keyword mentions across all unscripted TV genres — with home shows, docuseries, and food shows leading the way.
We worked with SHOWTIME/MTV Entertainment Studios to understand the impact of mental health depictions in entertainment. We found that quality and nuanced TV storylines can destigmatize mental health treatment and promote help seeking.
Hollywood, Health & Society teamed up with ATX for panels of TV writers and health experts on topics including cancer, reproductive health, and mental health. The festival honored Norman Lear and featured live readings of iconic Maude and Good Times episodes..
Our study with Caring Across Generations found that the final season of NBC’s This is Us influenced audience attitudes on caregiving issues. From universal challenges to policy support, the storyline had an impact on viewers' beliefs & actions.
Hollywood, Health & Society and EndWell co-hosted this online discussion delving into the use of psychedelics to ease the end of life experience. It featured author Michael Pollen, TV producer DJ Nash and Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider.
Dana Weinstein, project specialist for our Media Impact Project, and one of our lead researchers on plastics pollution depictions on TV, discusses our relationship to plastics in this conversation on NPR.
We’ve been working on a multi-year research project funded by the California Health Care Foundation to demystify narrative change efforts and help funders understand the commitments needed to move the needle on a variety of pro-social topics.
Researcher Soraya Giaccardi joined the panel “Thanks, We Made it Ourselves! The Native Storytelling Wave,” with IlluminNative and Nielsen to examine how Native storytellers are changing the game and impacting ratings, policy and community.
HH&S Director Kate Folb and Research Director Erica Rosenthal were at this year's Sundance Film Festival where they joined several events hosted by The Impact Lounge, a space that brings together filmmakers with those who believe entertainment can make a difference.
Two Lear Center projects were honored with Anthem Awards from the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences: our collaboration with Define American and Trigger Warning: Gun Guidelines for the Media.
Norman Lear took center stage in spirit during a celebrity-filled show hosted by comedian and writer Larry Wilmore at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. “This evening meant a lot to Norman, because he believed television can reflect our best,” Wilmore said.
We’re excited to be at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT, where we’ll be participating in several events hosted by The Impact Lounge, a space that brings together filmmakers with those who believe entertainment can make a difference.
How do you measure narrative impact? We partnered with the Pop Culture Collaborative to research and design a system for field members and funders working in narrative change to evaluate progress.
Congrats to USC Annenberg Professor Joe Saltzman who added the 100,000th entry to the Image of the Journalist in Pop Culture database. The database catalogs depictions of journalists in TV, film, fiction, cartoons, music, etc.
FRONTLINE, Jonathan Karl, Margaret Brennan, Jordan Klepper, Ben Collins, and others took prizes at the 12th biennial Walter Cronkite Awards. “Stolen” election, press freedom, violent extremism among issues tackled.
We collaborated with End Well to study end-of-life depictions on television. Through a character and keyword analysis, we found that scripted TV skews heavily toward violent death, with over 80% of television deaths caused by violence.
Hollywood, Health & Society and the Plastic Pollution Coalition announced the winners of the “Plastic Kills!” Short Film Contest! The contest was an effort to model for the entertainment industry real solutions to the plastic pollution crisis.
Our study with Gold House dives into depictions of Asian characters in scripted streaming. There is progress in casting Asian actors beyond tokenized characters, but these roles emphasize proximity to whiteness over authentic cultural specificity.
We are patterning with the advocacy org Caring Across Generations to study how caregiving is represented on TV, specifically on the final season of NBC's This is Us. Read all about it in Variety.
Funders interested in narrative change often ask the question: How do we know these strategies are working? Our latest report distills 25 best practices that make narrative change efforts more likely to be successful.
Trigger Warning: Gun Guidelines for the Media is Hollywood, Health & Society’s new resource guide created to better understand the presence of gun use in the entertainment industry.
Oriana Schwindt has been awarded the grand prize for her pilot of the series Merryville in our Blue Sky scriptwriting contest, which sought scripts set in a future we aspire to live in.
Fn their latest collaboration with Life Noggin, Hollywood, Health & Society’s latest video takes a look at the depression cycle, what it is and how to break free from it.
Five accomplished Hollywood veterans say there should be more stories in entertainment about the lives of older adults. This video was produced through the support of the Scan Foundation.
USC Professor Josh Kun, who heads up our Popular Music Project, has been named USC’s inaugural Vice Provost for the Arts. He’ll work to create a collaborative arts vision across the university’s campuses.
Our Media Impact Project Research Director Erica Rosenthal, and Hollywood, Health & Society Director Kate Folb are both on Forbes’ list of 68 Climate Leaders Changing the FIlm and TV Industry!
Hollywood, Health & Society and the TV Academy Foundation to co-host #ThePowerofTV: Reshaping Breast Cancer Narratives!
With support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, we identified best practices for achieving impact through science journalism, focusing on local coverage through the Pulitzer Center’s Connected Coastlines series.
We are a recipient of a 2022 Data for Good grant from the Nielsen Foundation. The funding will support our research into portrayals of fatness and anti-fat bias in medical dramas.
This year’s awards hosted by Hollywood, Health & Society honored 12 shows whose outstanding storytelling tackled powerful and timely topics, including Abbott Elementary, Hacks, Dopesick and A Million Little Things.
This study, conducted with Everytown for Gun Safety, examines how gun safety and gun violence prevention are depicted in popular TV and provides recommendations for how creators can improve portrayals.
A special edition of The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC) Journal presents the first comprehensive study of the depiction of sports journalists in popular culture, including film, television and fiction.
Through a content analysis and survey, our third study with Define American finds that the depiction of immigration on TV has shifted in both positive and negative ways since 2020.
Few can identify a fictional TV or film addressing the climate crisis. But those who are most alarmed about climate change also want to see these stories in fictional entertainment, according to our latest study with Good Energy.
Hollywood, Health & Society’s Kate Folb moderates this webinar with Fishtown Films’ Emily Gallagher & Austin Elston and "An Inconvenient Truth" producer Scott Z. Burns to share how writers can craft plastic-free worlds.
We collaborated with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh in a study of the impact of the Alzheimer's disease storyline in season 4 of NBC's This is Us. The results are public in the Journal of Health Communication.
ABC honored the life and legacy of a national treasure with Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter. Writer/producer Gloria Calderón Kellett was among the noted guests and gave the Lear Center a special shout out.
How do we study media to better understand its impact on society? Johanna Blakley provides this overview of our Media Impact Project and the research team's recent efforts studying narratives in TV, film and journalism.
A “lunch and learn” webcast discussion presented explored the health and wide-ranging effects of climate change and extreme weather. Hosted by Hollywood, Health & Society.
Hollywood, Health & Society presented a "lunch and learn" webcast that explored the ways AI will revolutionize how we grow older—from predicting illness to enriching daily life through virtual reality.
On July 27, 2022, Norman Lear celebrated his 100th birthday! As tribute, we recorded this special birthday message!
Happy Birthday, Norman! 🎂🥳❤️
We joined Define American at the 2022 ATX Festival for this panel featuring writers from Gentefied, Fresh off the Boat, The Cleaning Lady and Send Help who shared their journeys bringing immigrant characters to life on screen.
A study in collaboration with the National Domestic Workers Alliance highlights how domestic workers have been portrayed in film & TV and what Hollywood can do to change the narrative.
Since the dawn of TV, there have been over 400 plotlines about abortion, but this common medical procedure is often overdramatized and inaccurately depicted on TV. How can TV do better?
Our recent research with the USC Social Media Lab and California Dept. of Public Health aimed to determine the extent of e-cigarette-related imagery and dialogue in Netflix content popular with young adults.
Good Energy has released a free storytelling resource for screenwriters informed by our soon-to-be-released study of 37,453 film and TV scripts, we found that only a sliver (2.8%) refers to climate change-related words.
Hollywood, Health & Society brought together experts and TV writers-producers to explore the topic of emerging A.I.-driven technologies, including “slaughterbots” and their depiction in entertainment storylines.
Should the U.S. require participating in voting? USC Professor Roberto Suro moderated this conversation with authors E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport about their new book ‘100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting’.
Panelists from the Nuclear Threat Initiative The Washington Post think about the unthinkable in this Hollywood, Health & Society panel moderated by David Grae, former executive producer for CBS’s Madam Secretary.
A discussion hosted by Hollywood, Health & Society and moderated by professor and journalist Jelani Cobb looked at bias in Hollywood. Even though things have changed, much more needs to be done.
A survey of nearly 4,000 people found that viewers of Netflix’s The Social Dilemma were more knowledgeable about persuasive techniques employed by social media companies.
We examined portrayals of single-use plastics and reusable items on 32 popular TV shows from the 2019-2020 season. The study, Flip the Script on Plastics, found television awash in plastic pollution.
The virtual affair featured a guest appearance by Norman Lear. and gave a special honor for “Imagining a Culture of Health” to the third season of NBC’s medical drama, New Amsterdam.
Define American's latest best practices’ guide for telling immigrant stories in film and television includes findings from our recent collaborative impact study, “Change the Narrative, Change the World.”
Survivors and previvors of breast cancer are faced with difficult decisions about how their treatments can affect fertility, family planning and their future. Hollywood, Health & Society hosted a panel moderated by Tig Notaro.
The Omicron surge pushed an already stretched medical system to the limit. CNN's Phil Mattingly moderates this panel exploring how TV can tell stories that support our healthcare workers.
The 2021 Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Television Political Journalism celebrated journalism that sought truth, examined inequities and demonstrated the indispensability of a free and trustworthy press.
This ambitious cultural audit of poverty narratives in mass media attempted to answer the question: To what extent does pop culture perpetuate stigmatizing narratives about poverty?
Author Lesley Blume and journalist Eric Schlosser discussed her new book “Fallout” and the true story of the Hiroshima bombing. The event was hosted by Hollywood, Health & Society.
Entertainment could play a key role in shifting mindsets toward equity, justice and systemic change – and shift public support toward policies and practices that support them, according to this latest study.
NBC/MSNBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff joins Professor Roberto Suro to discuss his harrowing reporting on the Trump administration’s separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
This panel titled “Black Mothers Matter: Racism & Childbirth in America,” and hosted by Hollywood, Health & Society, explored why black women are three to four times more likely to die after giving birth than white women.
L.A.’s City Attorney secured a $1.2 million penalty against the Kandypens vaping company for marketing its products to kids. The court order was bolstered by this study of e-cigarette product placement in music videos conducted.
Managing Director Johanna Blakley and Hollywood, Health & Society Director Kate Folb weigh in on the potential of narratives in film, TV and video games to catalyze a pro-social culture shift in the UK.
To understand why American charitable giving is at an all time low, we analyzed narratives of charitable giving in news and entertainment. Our cultural audit included a national survey and content analysis of 2.6 million hours of TV.
Early findings from our study of poverty narratives in pop culture were part of this Money Matters webinar, which included writers/producers from Pose, New Amsterdam, Gentefied and Queen Sugar.
Our new study, Change the Narrative, Change the World, with Define American finds that TV shows with nuanced immigrant characters and storylines can shift attitudes and inspire people to real-life action.
This panel explored the terrifying implications the pandemic could have on voting, civic engagement and the 2020 election. Speakers included Stacey Abrams, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Norman Lear.
Hollywood, Health & Society brought together experts and TV writers-producers to explore the topic of emerging A.I.-driven technologies, including lethal autonomous weapons known as "slaughterbots.”
The Thomas Mann House hosted 2022 Fellow Andreas Nitsche and Lear Center Director Marty Kaplan to discuss what can be done to re-enable dialogue between divided parts of society.